Raw potatoes and other vegetables have long been cut into various sized pieces for cooking or processing by a variety of methods and machines. Early examples include, U.S. Pat. Nos. 97,047, issued Nov. 23, 1869 to Chrysler (device for cutting vegetables into narrow strips or slices); U.S. Pat. No. 101,520, issued Apr. 5, 1870 to Schaub (improvement in cabbage cutter); U.S. Pat. No. 497,675, issued May 16, 1983 to Miller (fruit or vegetable cutter); U.S. Pat. No. 1,534,078, issued Apr. 21, 1985 to Ruffner (vegetable slicing machine); and U.S. Pat. No. 2,017,559, issued Oct. 15, 1935 to Wolfinger (beet slicer).
A number of cutting tools and methods are also known for slicing or otherwise cutting potatoes. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,464,993, issued Mar. 22, 1949 to Ross; U.S. Pat. No. 2,610,664, issued Sep. 16, 1952 to Thompson; U.S. Pat. No. 3,057,386, issued Oct. 9, 1962 to Massaro; U.S. Pat. No. 3,217,768, issued Nov. 16, 1965 to Lamb; U.S. Pat. No. 3,952,621, issued Apr. 27, 1976 to Chambos; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,387,111, issued Jun. 7, 1983 to Mullender.
One known method of cutting potatoes into a plurality of helical strips involves rotating a potato against a fixed blade cutter. The device includes a cutting plate having a pivot pin for engaging one end of a potato. The other end of the potato is engaged by a toothed drive disk which is mounted opposite the plate on a crank driven shaft. A set of slitting knives protrude from the surface of the cutting plate and a cutting knife is mounted to the cutting plate adjacent the pivot pin. The blade of this knife extends radially from the pivot pin in a plane parallel to the surface of the cutting plate. These knives cut the potato into a plurality of helical strips as it is rotated against the cutting plate.
Although this device produces helically-cut potato strips, it suffers from several problems. First, since the potato is rotated against the cutting plate, a center core of the potato is progressively crushed against the plate resulting in waste and degradation of the product. The toothed drive disk also causes further waste since the potato cannot be cut into helical strips from end to end without interference between the teeth of the drive disk and the cutting knives. The speed of operation of this device is further limited by the time required to load a potato into axial alignment with the pivot pin and drive disk and by the limitations on rotational speed of the crank.
Further discussion of the history and operation of such cutting devices can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,644,838 entitled "Apparatus for Helical Cutting of Potatoes", issued to Samson et al. on Feb. 24, 1987 and assigned to Rogers Walla-Walla, Inc. (hereinafter the '838 patent). That patent discloses a method and apparatus for cutting articles such as potatoes into helical strips wherein the potato is held against rotation and aligned by a plurality of fingers and moved longitudinally against a rapidly rotating cutting head.
The particular cutter head disclosed in the '838 patent included a plurality of slitting knives which extend outward in a generally parallel alignment with the axis of rotation of the cutter head. The knives were positioned to form concentric longitudinal cuts in the potato. Helical strips are produced by a transverse blade, the cutting edge of which protrudes from the face of the cutter head as the cutter head is rotated against the potato. The cutter head may include a center pin for engaging the potato or, alternatively, could have included an upstanding cutting tube mounted at the rotational center of the cutting head. That tube is sharpened and cuts a cylinder of material from the center of the potato.
While operation of the cutting device of the '838 patent overcame many of the difficulties of prior art cutting devices and provided a method for rapidly cutting a potato into a plurality of helical strips without waste of a significant portion of the potato, there remains a need for a cutting head which would improve the efficiency of the cut. Moreover, while various cutting heads are known, such as those shown to be useful in food processors and the like (see, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,393,737, issued Jul. 19, 1983 to Shibata and 4,228,963, issued Oct. 21, 1980 to Yamauchi), or those shown in the patents cited above, such known cutting heads fail to fully address the foregoing deficiencies.